I agree, the flood of host bots is making the finding and playing of a game extremely difficult. Heck, I have to wait ten minutes just for a DotA game to get started anymore, let alone one of the lesser known games.
More variety you say? More like lack-thereof. Operating a hostbot is not something easily accomplished by anyone, likewise, generating the necessary file to interface with the bot isn't the funnest of times for your average warcraft 3 player. You're stuck with what the community gives you, or requesting and waiting. Hostbots host the exact same thing practicially all day mostly for the sake of advertising. #347, #965, they say.
I mean, sticking with DotA and the DotAcash, DotAPub, and others, these bots generally have a very poor connection, drop at least two players a game, and take forever to bring anyone in because there are so MANY of them. DotA used to be flooded as it was but now when you have four DotAPubs, three DotACash, and others. Any of the real DotA players had sifted into inhousing only in order to avoid the chaos.
Now onward to the other games. Metastatis and Parasite are ones i tend to see hosted almost all the time. As well as I see a Madballs one always up. Impossible Seige too. I should not be able to cite games I see every single time I look at the list. You call that variety? It was bad enough when DotA was always there, but now five or more games have joined its ranks because of constant bot hosting. The majority of the time the other games that might stand somewhat of a chance of being entertaining are just compeltely empty as well.
That's another thing, Host bots are almost always empty, the owner, or any owner is not present, it is being hosted just for the sake of it. This might seem like a great idea at first, really get your game, or some game out there, but it detracts from a social experience we had as far as playing with others. The first person who enters is alone, the second person has no reason to talk to the first, he'll more then likely just sit and wait for the game to start, rinse and repeat until the game starts, several people leave because they've developed little or no dialog and they now find the game boring. The game ends. It's rehosted.
When people actually hosted, they tended to talk to the people who joined. I don't know if you did, but I always have. Generally because I was bored myself and knew it might be a while. That simple human dialog is what keeps most people around in the first place. If I wanted to play a game alone, i'd go play something on single-player.
So yes, I absolutely agree. Hosting bots are damaging Battle.net with a flood of supply, and an ever decreasing demand. I seriously hope this plague does not infect sc2 for a very, very long time, as it was originally with wc3.
